Seattle for Cousins First Birthday

We trekked on over to Seattle to help the kids cousin, baby Lincoln, celebrate his first birthday.

Matry and Lincoln. Marty and I had to blow up like 70 ballons - it was exhausting, but Lincoln sure liked them.

Kids swimming in the pool even though it was freezing.

This is the cleanest first cake experience ever. He didn't even try to eat it.

Curt locked the kids up in a chain.

Xuan, Kyra and Lincoln.

Matt with his two oldest buddies, Matteen and Yaseen.

Cousins!

Lincoln got Kya's trike for his bday.

It takes a good 24 hours before Lincoln lets strange women hold him!

Curt relaxing.

I love this photo. The cousins!

It's Fair Time Again

It;'s fair time again. About a week ago we had our annual trek to the Spokane Interstate Fair. The kids always have fun checking out the animals, eating fair food and going on a ride or two.

The last few years the fair has hosted a petting zoo. You can spend a buck and get grain to feed the animals there.

My two little lamas/ 

That camel has a great face.

And he even smiles for the photo.

Someone made a cool dragon sculpture named Fawkes.

Kyra go off the ride and  whispered to me that "Mom, the sport car didn't go very fast!" She thought it needed to be fixed.

Fall Sailing

OK, so last Sept, are weekends were super busy with soccer, etc, and we did not get to sail. And, we discovered that Sept is usually the best month to sail. All the motor boats are gone for the season and it just good sailing, sunny, light breeze, not crowded, etc. Well, not so this Sept, it's drizzly or stormy, at least on the weekends that were around. But here's a nice, quite photo of a lone sail boat on a huge lake.

Kids having fun while dad is grilling dinner and mom is heating up soup in the galley.

We have a little grill we can use on the stern of our boat, and the bimini, so to keep Curt dry from the drizzle.

Third Grade

Tuesday, Sept. 3 was Matt's first day of third grade. He was excited to get back to school.

Angelina and Matt. They were in K, 1 and now 3 grades together.

Mason and Matt. They've been in every grade together and are super good buddies. Mason's mom takes care of Matt 2 days a week in the summer - so he get's to experience the lazy days of summer that he misses out on since both of us work.

Matt, Abby and Mason. I think Abby and Mason have a crush on each other!

Daddo and Matto!

Mommo and Matto.

I got off work early so that Kyra could ride her bike to Matt's school to pick him up.

Then we had Matt and 3 of his buddies come over for a play date epic hike along the river. Kyra brought an umbrella, just in case we needed it. Watch out for poison ivy - it's all over the place down there!

Bugs

Curt bought some seasoned bugs to eat. The kids liked them. Matt preferred grubs, Kyra crickets.Good source of protein. And I think they ate them all up.

Monster Veggie Garden

We haven't been able to tend to our garden as much as we'd like. So, this year, we have a monster garden. You can barely walk through and harvest it's so over grown. At least the monster veggies are yummy.

Munching their way through the garden.

Monster cherry tomato plant with monster Matt.

Crazy tomatilla plant with krazy Kyra.

Lego-man

Matthew has had a passion for legos for the past 7+ years. With the America's Cup happening this summer, he's been building all sorts of sailing vessels. He even tests some of the smaller vessels out in water to see how stable they are in strong wind.

AC72

AC72 racing a monohull and winning.

Here's the monohull.

Sailing the last week of August

 We took the last week of August off of work to go sailing in Pend Orille.

Kyra swimming in Beaver Bay.

A butterfly in Buttonhook Bay kept landing on Matt.

Kyra really wanted the butterfly to land on her, but it just didn't happen.

But Curt found a garter snake for the kids to investigate.

Matthew caught enough fish for our dinner one evening. Kyra caught a bunch too.

On our way to Whiskey Rock - beautiful shoreline.

She finally has a name on her hull. It's the same name for the last 40 years. We tried to come up with a new name, but nothing sounded right. Since Miss Noel has been on the lake for the past 30+ years, we've run into many sailors that have sailed her, and loved her. We thought it would be best to keep the name.

Miss Noel, Kent Ranger 24 all ready to sail to Whiskey Rock.

On our way to Whiskey Rock. Light winds, slow sailing and great views. On our way back to Bayview a few days later we had 2-3 foot waves, strong winds and slow motoring. The winds were too strong for novice sailors like us.

A sun fish.

Sunset from the boat at Whiskey Rock.

Matt found a new fishing buddy.

Kyra met a new hiking buddy.